The things we are testing for are not so much clear-cut presence or absence, but volumes and concentrations based on statistical curves, and it's a constant race so somebody who was "legit & natural last year" may be "doping and illegal this year" or vice versa; everybody will have SOME naturally or legally allowed amount of tested substance; etc. Which means that I cannot get excited that ANYbody at olympic level is doing it "on their own, unassisted, natural", for whatever definition of above we take.
But at that level, everyone is operating under the same rules. That's just the nature of competition, no? People will take any edge they can while following the letter of the law, if not the spirit.
Hell, even in the context of "on their own, unassisted", some countries directly support their Olympic athletes in terms of training, coaching and facilities, while other athletes have to pay out of pocket for that sort of thing and figure it out on their own and thus are more "unassisted", but there are no rules about that...
At the end of the day, all you can hope for is that the rules are applied justly & transparently.
No they are not. In reality it means, the athlete with the better chemist behind him, meaning the one with the not yet traceble substance, will win.
The one that seems a bit borderline but perhaps small enough effect and also already so commonly used by the general population anyways that its not too reasonable to consider it to be "doping" which would be caffeine.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/212873/the-secret-r...
yep, it is all individual. Some people have nice biology, some will get nowhere without "stuff". A recent blood test showed some anemia (that explained why i had such low level fatigue and tiredness threshold in the recent times, and you couldn't just make through it on pure will because it is like an engine with closed air intake - no oxygen, no burning) Started to take B12 and iron - things improved remarkably, physically and mentally. If i were a competitive athlete should i be forbidden from such a "cheating" way of increasing of blood oxygen carrying capability?
My understanding they ban testosterone which also increase the blood oxygen carrying capability. Which means that you're lucky to be born with high testosterone, and you're doomed otherwise (like me - i'm on a lower side). How is that a level playing field then? No exercise can compensate if you get less oxygen.
Testosterone supplementation can induce erythrocytosis, but you can accomplish that more directly with EPO. (I don't recommend doing that.)
no, it is just a feel good fairy tale. You're missing the point - amount of oxygen defines your speed/endurance/etc that you can reach. It is basic law of physics. Put a gas mask on and narrow the pipe half or even just a quarter - no amount of training will help you overcome that. I was an amateur boxer - 4th at University 30 years ago - so i'm not just armchair talking.
For the last decade i've been running and hiking regularly and there recently was a deep in my performance - pushing harder didn't work, it was just like hitting glass ceiling - which got corrected once i saw the anemia and corrected it with supplements. Did i instead have to accept the low level of performance, accompanied by easily setting fatigue, etc. just for sake of "naturalcy"? And if I to run some competition should I stop the supplements and try to run with anemia?
>No one realistically expects a level playing field.
exactly. So why wouldn't we try to to level it as much as possible. Wouldn't it make the competition more honest as it would allow to win the ones who train harder and play smarter than the ones who just accidentally got better DNA?
If you have a legitimate medical condition then you can apply for a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) to take banned supplements while still being allowed to compete.
https://www.wada-ama.org/en/resources/therapeutic-use-exempt...
This is because there's not a lot of money in telling people to lift heavy stuff that's literally all around us and eat commonly available protein-rich foods. What is there to sell? In comes the gadgets and supplements.
Athletes and the public have a different interpretation of what doping actually is. The public thinks of doping as taking performance enhancing substances.
Athletes think of doping as crossing the specified threshold/limit.
I have heard this interpretation on TV from a well connected Dutch cycling journalist ( Mart Smeets ).
Every athlete takes performance enhancing substances.
The example I know best is steroids. A younger athlete, before getting into high-level competition, or during the offseason, does a "cycle" or two of steroids. The effect is to build more strength or size. When the athlete ends the steroid cycle some, but not all of the strength or size is lost, assuming they continue training.
What this means is that they have a foundation to build on that's already above what the athlete who doesn't use steroids has. A year or two down the road, there's absolutely no trace of steroids in the athlete's system, so they easily pass drug tests. However, the benefit was already gained.
So for athletes the limits are time-bounded, not dose-bounded.
That line is a clear one. If you take that line, then no, not every athlete takes performance enhancing substances. But if you count, say, caffeine, then yes, most athletes do. And non-athletes too, FWIW.
“Exercise-induced asthma is the most common medical problem among winter Olympic athletes, especially among cross-country skiers. Nearly 50% of these athletes suffer from the condition, closely followed by short-track speed skaters at 43%. For figure skaters it’s 21%, Nordic combined it’s 17%, and for ice hockey it’s 15%. By comparison, around 9% of the UK general population suffers from asthma.”
The situation is something like "huh, a whole lot of Vietnam draftees seem to suffer from flat feet, somehow our drafting algorithm must have pulled in more flat feet people than exist in the entire population".
None of these guys have asthma: http://www.granfondoguide.com/Contents/Index/3488/dick-pound...
My lungs are currently in the annual process of acclimating to the newly cold fall air. Every year for decades I've been running in October and there are a couple weeks when the temperature crashes from the last encore of summer at 60F/15C seemingly overnight to frosty mornings and 40F/5C runs and the leaves change. I can feel that my legs are fine but I'm breathing harder than usual, and I can literally see on my Garmin that my average pace has decreased but my heart rate is unchanged or elevated. By November my VO2 max will be up a bit and my pace will be mostly back to normal.
Does it feel like I'm breathing through a slimy straw on those first frosty mornings? Yes. Am I in danger of asphyxiating from it? No, and I think that's a critical distinction - some of my friends are, they should use an inhaler to counteract their body's over reaction to the conditions. Can I get over it without medication? Yes. Would I be faster if I had blood salbutamol levels of 800 ug/L instead of 0 and an unrestricted airway? Yes, whether I used it in training to work out at a higher level than I otherwise could, raced with it, or both.
I'd be interested in an analysis of those cross-country skiers if they compared the mucus and muscle response of the undiagnosed and diagnosed athletes with and without their inhalers. Do an EVH test and take an ultrasound of the larynx/trachea to measure smooth muscle constriction and mucus production after 15 minutes on the treadmill at 68F/20C and 50% RH, open the door and do it at 32F/0C and 5% RH, then take a hit of an inhaler and do both again (with appropriate breaks between tests). It could also be interesting to look at the responses of non-winter-sport athletes transplanted from warmer climates versus those who have been working out in those conditions for a few months.
It would be hypocritical not to admit that I occasionally take a pseudoephedrine throughout the fall because my nasal mucus membranes get more productive when raking dusty leaves or running through fields of ragweed - which is, again, pretty normal. To me, the main difference is that suffering through the snot doesn't lead to overcoming it, it's just gross and annoying.
Now all competitors will take additional hormones to reach, but not cross said level. As long as this works, they think of themselves as not doping and levelling the playing field. But they are taking hormones.
World Athletics Female Eligibility Regulations on testosterone levels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Athletics_Female_Eligibi...
Case of Caster Semenya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caster_Semenya
If you now answer that it's unfair that the person with naturally occurring higher levels can have it but those with lower levels can't "level" the playing field, well, tough luck. That's just the lottery that gives some people an advantage in certain sports. We all accept that some people are naturally tall and therefore have advantages in basketball. Or some people have naturally stronger VO2 max and thereby advantages in endurance sports.
The competition is how far you can get with the _natural state_ of your body, plus training. Not how far you can get as long as everybody pumps some substances up to a previously-agreed-upon threshold. Those thresholds are just the sad plan-B solution of anti-doping agencies if they can't directly measure doping substances and need to resort to measuring the effects instead. That actually disadvantages those with naturally higher effects.
Nobody would think of restricting maximum leg length, and as long as your legs are not longer than that it's fine to surgically extend them.
In some sports you even have different weight classes. Rowing has 2, wrestling has 6 (olympic), boxing has 8-10 (olympic). The techniques there also differ slightly.
And there are other partitionings of the population too that restrict in who can participate in a competition. You have world championships, but you also have nationals. And regional competitions. And junior leagues. And school competitions.
Then there is also the paralympics.
You can find all that reasonable or ridiculous, but I'm not sure how that's related to doping.
It’s worth noting here that the first Olympic doping suspension was for drinking a beer.
No. I was one and I didn't. And I knew a lot of athletes. I know how most of them were thinking. What you said is simply not true.
Do I think every professional athlete is on PEDs? Yes. Does it make what they are doing any less super human? No. It's like your typical person looking at a bodybuilder and saying, I could look like that if i did steroids. Which is total bullshit.
EditAdd: I did know people who were fascinated about EPO-like medication, and asthma medicine when used without actually having asthma. That was when they were quite young, and that's also a long time ago. I never ran into any of them actually using anything, and they were in the minority - I met just two, and sadly one of them died in a traffic accident before he got to a professional level.
I am sure there is plenty.
It's simply physiologically impossible to accomplish what these athletes are doing without assistance.
Just like arguing "well we only lost the election cause the other side cheated."
In fact, less commercialized sports are much more interesting to watch and participate because they are not just full of over-hyped over-payed over-celebritized evening-entertainment shows designed to milk the audience of most money possible.
If "athlete" ends for you at what's on pay TV and on ads at bus stops, sure. But that's a very limited view of sports. And quite sad, frankly.
Yes this! You have 3 doping levels from cheapest to really expansive:
3: Silver (the doping that is known and detectable)
2: Gold (known and probably detectable but often combined with additional substance to "wash it out" faster or hide it behind other stuff like "legal" painkillers etc)
1: Platinum (doping that is not detectable in the next 5 years "seal of proof by laboratories?")
--------
3: Is for your little Darling or Bodybuilders ;)
2: For your National-cup
1: For Olympics, World-cups etc..(everything where lots of money is behind)
There is a lot of paranoia in the running community (for example) that even local municipal marathons are being won by amateurs doping (not to mention some people running with those Nike “Vaporfly” shoes with the carbon fiber plate in them.) I have my doubts about how effective it is at the amateur level. I suspect it’s like amateurs buying expensive golf clubs and golf balls hoping it will make them better when really they just need more practice and are skill limited rather than gear limited.
With that said I think a lot of the pedantics of "but IS doping really happening in international sports" going on in this thread could be emphatically answered with "uh, yes" by simply watching _Icarus_.
How much money is behind those sports? Hint...NOT much. We Talk about Cycling, Athletics, Football and so on..
>I know for a fact that 3 isn't even used on national-cup event in France
No you don't.
BTW: I knew for a Fact that Lance Armstrong was the biggest Cycle Pro ever born and he would never need doping because he was just in another league then anyone else.
EDIT: Would you look at that:
http://sportscene.tv/paddlesports/2016/07/doping-problem-in-...
https://www.firstpost.com/sports/rio-2016-doping-scandal-hit...
But that's the Romanian Team...would never happen in France right?
Not the Olympic sailing...Oracle stuff yes...but do you really need doping for sailing? It's more about tactics not ultra high-end body-strength..i sailed Lasers for 4 years and it is demanding, but nothing against Street-cycling/CrossCountry
> How much money is behind those sports? Hint...NOT much. We Talk about Cycling, Athletics, Football and so on..
No, the parent talked about:
> basically every elite athlete is doping.
That's just not true. Unless you have a totally twisted understanding of what an athlete is.
MONEY BEHIND...that's something else. And the Athletes don't pay for the Stuff, AND it's not in every sport and not every sport profits from doping.
My friend was in the finals in Beijing and in London, top-6. In London half a second from a medal. Yes doping would help immensely but those guys have too much honor to do this. No, there is no money behind. He gets sponsoring in form of a boat which is sponsored by the manufacturer. The rest of his life's expenses, all travels, housing, shipping of his equipment, bring wife and kids along sometimes, mortgage on their house, all that needs to be paid for. And it was a struggle to finance all this. Friends help, family helps, and a few local companies in his hometown chip in. He is a construction engineer and his net worth is less than half mine as a mid-30 programmer.
So yes, everybody keep downvoting me and ignore that not every "elite athlete" is some overpaid basketball or soccer pro making 8-figures a year and evading taxes.
True in Curling i never heard of doping. And trust me even your friend would not told you if he takes doping (no saying he did).
And again not every Sport profits from Doping and not everyone takes them but lots and lots of them do, and having a blind eye because of profit is the unfair thing for the honest and sportsmanship'ish peoples.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/sports/olympics/olympic-c...
Your feelings are not in congruence with facts.
> And again not every Sport profits from Doping and not everyone takes them but lots and lots of them do, and having a blind eye because of profit is the unfair thing for the honest and sportsmanship'ish peoples.
Again, evidence or it did not happen. You are casting unproven claims as facts. That gives the impression that the default is an athlete is doped, and _that's_ what's unfair.
Thanks for the laugh.
Unless an athlete shows up that does manage to bring in serious amounts of money. In that case the lid goes on for a few years.
EDIT:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6327574/
>In football players, doping has recently become an important matter
>>Androgen abuse has not only a direct effect on myocardial hypertrophy and fibrosis, but can also result in myocardial infarction, arrhythmia, hypertension and dyslipidemia
>>>Herbal supplements, anti-histamines and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/aug/08/more-young-f...
But no probable connection to Doping...when the guardian sleeps...
"Of the 50 fastest men's 100m sprint times ever, only 15 have been run by an athlete NOT banned for drugs. All 15 were by Usain Bolt."
https://twitter.com/sportingintel/status/1164654855329329152...
I want to make clear that Jamaica is not an outlier or "bad guy". Really they are small fry in the industrial olympic sports machine. What they really are is a window into what the big time countries do.
It of course helps that sprinting is a national obsession in Jamaica, so the best athletes do sprinting. But that's been true for a long time.
Personally, I do not think humans can run faster than 9.90 in the 100m without "aid". or under 20.00 in the 200, or under 44 in the 400m.
I do not think a human can run faster than 13:00 in the 5000m, or 27:00 in the 10,000m, or somewhere around 2:08 in the marathon.
But those are personal opinions.
It is possible to cheat to gain an advantage, and not get detected. People with the drive to become elite athletes in the first place, are very likely to be tempted. Once even 1 athlete in the sport is cheating, others will feel it is necessary to cheat with them to compete. This has happened over and over in every sport I know of.
If you look at a chart of when EPO became available, and all those good knowledgeable DDR sport med docs became available on the free market, there's this discontinuous drop in world records fro pretty much all endurance sports.
Notice the discontinuity around 1994: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10,000_metres_world_record_pro... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5000_metres_world_record_progr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_record_progression_1500_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_de_France_records_and_sta...
You'll see similar changes with the introduction of synthetic testosterone in weight lifting records, and the physical appearance of the top bodybuilders.
EDIT: And this ignores "mechanical" doping in cycling- where you stick an electric motor on the bike. We've suspected it for a while at the pro ranks, and got confirmation when a small fry got nabbed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femke_Van_den_Driessche
I don’t feel qualified to remark on other sports but based on casual observation of the opinions of bodybuilding fans or even wrestling fans/people into Hollywood, it seems most regular people are very ignorant about PED usage as a phenomenon.
There are limits to the rate that you can pack on muscle mass or how much you can maintain at a low body fat percentage which are telltale signs of PED use (not that I judge it, but just to temper my own expectations). I think many people’s ignorance of these signs are fueling body dysmorphia and insecurity. It’s better if people are aware of how common PED usage is in bodybuilding, Hollywood, and “instagram bodybuilders”
Improvement of equipment is always a massive gray area. Cycling (aside from electric motors) has aerodynamic bikes, wind tunnel access. XC skiing has environmentally bad teflon wax. Swimming, theoretically the most naked/equipment-less sport, has sharkskin suits and buoyancy aids.
There are other advantages like expensive altitude tents.
I wonder if we're using different definitions of "win" here. To my way of thinking, if a person has cheated, they didn't win, regardless of what the official judges conclude.
(Apologies if I'm misunderstanding the point you're trying to make.)
If you are the top of any sport, there's money, fame, groupies, etc. There's a real incentive to do it.
Moreover, the audience wants to see superhumans and world records broken. To paraphrase Futurama about women's basketball "good fundamentals, but can't dunk". The governing bodies of all pro sports look the other way.
I don't know what fraction of those athletes cheated. But I consider my definition of "win" to be reasonable regardless of how many competitors cheat.
This reminds me of a famous quote[0]:
> When Abraham Lincoln was asked by a prosecuting attorney, “How many legs does a sheep have?” He replied, “Four.” The attorney then asked, “If you called a sheep’s tail a leg, how many legs would he have?” Lincoln replied, “Four. Merely because you call a sheep’s tail a leg does not make it one.”
[0] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/11/15/legs/#:~:text=When%...
"I just bought a 2-bedroom house, but I think I get to decide how many bedrooms there are, don't you? "Fuck you, real estate lady! This bedroom has an oven in it! This bedroom's got a lot of people sitting around watching TV. This bedroom's over in that guy's house! Sir, you have one of my bedrooms, are you aware? Don't decorate it!"
> Van den Driessche had been taking part in the inaugural under 23 women’s event, which was won by Britain’s Evie Richards. The Belgian and European under 23 champion had gone in as a pre-race favourite but did not feature at the front. She was eventually forced off her bike on the final lap when she was struck by mechanical problems and ended up walking with her bike.
> Van den Driessche’s bike was taken for inspection along with several other bikes after the race. It quickly became apparent that something was wrong with her bike and news of the discovery quickly spread; however it is only this Sunday morning that they revealed their discovery. It gives Van den Driessche the dubious honour of being the first rider to be discovered to be using a motor. Incidentally, Van den Driessche’s brother Niels is currently suspended for doping.
https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/uci-confirms-motorised-dopi...
Her claim is the motorised bike belonged to a friend, was handed to her in error, and she rode the race on it without using the motor as she didn't know it was there.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/bike-investigated-technologi...
For me, cycling lost its luster not only after Lance Armstrong was caught and spent years lying to the American public about it, but also after repeat stories like this one (https://www.velonews.com/news/road/cbs-news-12-riders-used-m...) involving the Tour de France and other high-profile races.
The Olympics holds up the ideal of a level playing field for wholesome young athletes from all over the world to compete, but I think everyone knows that it's not a level playing field, even if the strategies used by certain countries to win are perfectly legal such as expensive training programs and granting citizenship to people who have tenuous connections to the new countries they represent (https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2014/02/14/switching-nationa...):
... There are several stories of athletes switching countries, including South Korean speedskater Ahn Hyun-soo who became a Russian citizen and changed his name to Viktor Ahn to join the Russian speedskating team, after falling out with the South Korean skating federation.
It's a shame, because I want to believe athletes and their coaches are honest people who strive for the highest possible standards, but it's hard not to become jaded after decades of pervasive instances of unfair advantages, corner-cutting, and outright cheating.
The Olympics is first and foremost a political event. Sports come second.
It hurts to realize but that's a fact of life. The next thing that's hurting might be to realize that many athletes are likely to be missing because of logistics/visa/costs issues.
If you ever competed at a high level or spent enough time researching commonly available drugs and how testing is conducted it becomes obvious of what's really happening. This isn't even mentioning people with large budgets who have completely undetectable designer ones
There's a studying showing people who remain sedentary whilst taking test gain more muscle mass than someone who frequents the gym 3 times a week.
You have enormous money and prestige on the line and lots of powerful entities (FIFA, IOC, NFL, countries, athletic wear companies, etc) that don't have a huge incentive to catch their golden boy athletes doping.
The dopers have basically ruined sprinting and a number of other sports for anyone who wanta to compete cleanly and does well.
It's entirely possible that Bolt is clean and is a Phelps like genetic outlier, but there will always be suspicions that can never be disproved, no matter what he does.
Genetic modification will be the next frontier in cheating.
There’s an assortment of performance enhancers that are legal in most competitions, and are extensively use by amateurs (think gels in running for example). This things only become doping once a competition bans them, and athletes fight for every advantage. Since competitions are slow to move, stands to reason that all athletes are doping, at least by the standards of tomorrow.
For endurance sports, the EPO effect is pretty well documented based on its arrival in the early-to-mid nineties. It's multiple percents to perhaps 10% of an advantage, which is basically "game over" for the natural athlete.
If there are a ton of athletes performing at levels that EPO athletes were... what other conclusion is there?
Blood passport basically exists to keep the cheating out of control (to levels where thickened blood kills people overnight with brain clots), but either the BBC or guardian had a reporter do microdosing and tested with formal testing and their blood passport numbers stayed "in bounds".
Steroids is a similar game changer for fast twitch. The current sprinting records are so far above what Ben Johnson was doing.
Consider the rarity of high-level cheaters being busted in soccer, tennis, basketball, and American football, where the monetary rewards are 100-1000x more than olympic athlete success.
Consider all the hollywood action stars and the efficacy of PEDs in achieving a necessary look for a multimillion dollar role. Is there drug testing in hollywood?
And PEDs absolutely have penetrated all scholastic levels of athletics/sport with the easy availability via the internet and the sports-crazed overachievement OCD of athlete parents.
Sports are a theatric illusion.
Among the many books that have written on this topic, Speed Trap by the late Charlie Francis is enlightening.
Indeed, and one of the most common uses of doping is not make you stronger or perform better per se. but to let your body recover quicker so you can train longer and harder with shorter recovery time between training sessions.
True, but if your just 0.2% better because of doping your still on the winning side.
Any sport that requires a lot of peak or near peak strength is very likely full of drugs. And that doesn't detract from all the hard work these athletes put into their sport.